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In northern India and surrounding countries of the Lower Himalaya, apple is an important cash crop that contributes significantly to state economies and farmer livelihoods. Apple cultivation is shifting to higher elevations to counter declining fruit yields associated with climate change. Pollinator scarcity is another factor linked to declines in fruit yield and quality. To advance understanding of bee diversity and pollination ecology in apples for this region, we compiled a taxonomically updated list of bee taxa associated with apple orchards using records from existing literature and a new field study. Our list includes 25 bee genera, 75 named species, and numerous morphospecies. Common genera also feature prominently in apple studies elsewhere in the world. Apis cerana and A. mellifera were the most frequently reported visitors to apple flowers; Bombus, Ceratina, Lasioglossum, and Syrphidae flies were the most common non-Apis floral visitors. Bee species richness was inversely correlated with elevation and pollination deficit whereas bee abundance was not. Therefore, apples grown at higher elevations may experience more favourable growing conditions but also incur greater pollination deficits that are linked to reduced bee richness. This underscores the importance of conserving bee diversity to safeguard pollination services and farmer livelihoods in the region. Our literature review further highlights the need for more tools to identify the regional bee fauna, more thoroughly documented and standardised study methods to build capacity within the research community and aid comparative studies, and more expansive cataloguing and monitoring of pollinator communities to better understand the diversity, roles, and status of bees throughout this under-studied region. 

Abstract This paper synthesizes the contemporary challenges for the sustainability of the social-environmental system (SES) across a geographically, environmentally, and geopolitically diverse region—the Asian Drylands Belt (ADB). This region includes 18 political entities, covering 10.3% of global land area and 30% of total global drylands. At the present time, the ADB is confronted with a unique set of environmental and socioeconomic changes including water shortage-related environmental challenges and dramatic institutional changes since the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The SES of the ADB is assessed using a conceptual framework rooted in the three pillars of sustainability science: social, economic, and ecological systems. The complex dynamics are explored with biophysical, socioeconomic, institutional, and local context-dependent mechanisms with a focus on institutions and land use and land cover change (LULCC) as important drivers of SES dynamics. This paper also discusses the following five pressing, practical challenges for the sustainability of the ADB SES: (a) reduced water quantity and quality under warming, drying, and escalating extreme events, (b) continued, if not intensifying, geopolitical conflicts, (c) volatile, uncertain, and shifting socioeconomic structures, (d) globalization and cross-country influences, and (e) intensification and shifts in LULCC. To meet the varied challenges across the region, place-based, context-dependent transdisciplinary approaches are needed to focus on the human-environment interactions within and between regional landscapes with explicit consideration of specific forcings and regulatory mechanisms. Future work focused on this region should also assess the role of the following mechanisms that may moderate SES dynamics: socioeconomic regulating mechanisms, biophysical regulating mechanisms, regional and national institutional regulating mechanisms, and localized institutional regulating mechanisms.